- Samsung reportedly doubles the cost of DDR5 RAM
- This is the contract price for DDR5 charged to RAM manufacturers
- But as always, price increases in the supply chain will be passed on to consumers – if this rumor is correct, of course.
There is even more worrying news about the cost of RAM, as Samsung is rumored to be significantly increasing the price of DDR5 memory (and the price of DDR4 continues to rise as well).
Notebookcheck.net spotted that leaker Jukan on
Taiwanese media: DRAM price surge shows no signs of stopping According to Taiwanese media, Samsung abruptly increased the DDR5 contract price to $19.50, bringing it to almost $20. This figure represents an increase of more than 100% compared to the previous one…December 15, 2025
Obviously take this with some skepticism, but the claim is that Samsung is now charging a contract price of $19.50 (per 2GB memory chip) for 16GB of DDR5, more than double what it was before when this increase arrived in late November, we’re told.
We must not forget that prices have more than doubled (they were 9 dollars), and although this relates to the cost of the supply chain, as always, this increase will be passed on to consumers who will end up footing the bill.
Technowvoice describes the RAM industry as being in a state of “structural disruption” and that regarding this latest price hike, Samsung has simply told its downstream customers that there is simply “no stock!” (Please note that the article is translated from Chinese, so some nuances may be lost in terms of the original meaning).
The report further notes that the price of the latest generation DDR4 RAM quadrupled following the withdrawal of Samsung and most other major players from the market, and that the contract price for this slower memory also increased to $18 late last month.
Analysis: no sign of a planned stop in price increases
It’s clear that a serious disruption is underway, of course, as we saw in the ridiculously steep – even almost vertical – slope. increase in the price of RAM sticks at retail since the end of September. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such a rapid rise in prices for any type of PC components (except for maybe the highest-end GPUs when stocks were short during the crypto craze).
This report from Technowvoice further observes that the hope was that by December 2025, RAM price hikes might start to calm down and we might see the worst of the increases in October and November. However, this is not the case; instead we get even steeper price increases.
The report also notes that memory makers have nowhere to turn, because whether they make DDR4 or DDR5 RAM, prices have skyrocketed.
In short, it’s likely that system RAM will become even more expensive – as if it wasn’t expensive enough already – and that storage will suffer a similar fate, to boot.
If you’re considering purchasing DDR4 or DDR5 RAM, the best advice for now is apparently to wait and hope that some of the more pessimistic predictions – claiming that these price increases could last until 2027 or even longer – turn out to be wrong. But system memory is already crazy expensive right now, so buying it seems like a foolish move unless you can find a reasonable deal. (Storage and SSDs are a different case, especially for budget drives – and you may want to act now or quickly on that front).
The problem is that the cost of RAM doesn’t just affect those building a new PC or upgrading their existing computer’s memory: it will also have a major impact on the price of pre-built devices, including laptops.
With this new bad news from Samsung, it looks like the situation could be worse than we thought, and the price of RAM and laptops could be significantly inflated heading into next year. I certainly wouldn’t bet against it.
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